


The Trial of the Flame Alchemist

by Griselda_Gimpel



Series: Rebuilding Ishval [7]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Background Slash, Bigotry & Prejudice, Boss/Employee Relationship, Canon - Manga, Canon Compliant, Canon Continuation, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Witnesses, Courtroom Drama, Dentists, F/M, Gen, Gish Gallop, Het, Ishbalan Character(s) | Ishvalan Character(s), Ishval Civil War, Jury Duty, Lawyers, M/M, Nazis by Another Name, Original Character(s), Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Ableism, Period-Typical Racism, Period-Typical Sexism, Post-Canon, Post-Promised Day, Sign Language, Torture, Trials
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2019-01-09
Packaged: 2019-09-24 20:36:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 16,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17107703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Griselda_Gimpel/pseuds/Griselda_Gimpel
Summary: Roy Mustang stands trial for his crimes in Ishval.





	1. Before the Trial

One day, Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye arrived in Ishval and offered her full confession. More than that, she agreed to testify against Brigadier General Roy Mustang. She spoke first to Major Miles, who immediately directed her to the Prosecutor, who at the time was Ishval’s only lawyer.

                The Prosecutor was an old man with not a lot of hair on his head and quite a lot of hair on his chin. He’d played a minor role in the big scheme of things. He wasn’t an alchemist or a chimera or a homunculus. He hadn’t fought on the Day of Reckoning. His second biggest claim to fame was helping his grandson Luke pull Scar out of the sewer and give him refuge in the slums outside of East City. (His biggest claim to fame was, of course, his family. In addition to his grandson Luke, he had his daughter Ruth and his son-in-law Lucas. Every morning when he woke up, he thanked Ishvala that he still had them.) Since the rebuilding of Ishval, he’d helped Scar legally change his name (the man had gone with “Ezekiel Keystone”), handled the case against Dr. Tim Marcoh (an easy affair, as Marcoh had pled guilty without a fuss), and prosecuted the case against Scar for the murder of the Rockbells (Scar had been found Not Guilty by Reasons of Temporary Insanity, and there were no hard feelings between Scar and the Prosecutor after the fact).

                The Prosecutor directed Hawkeye to sit in the chair in the interrogation room. He’d gotten the bare details from Miles, but he wasn’t entirely sure if he believed them. For the next two hours, Hawkeye gave the Prosecutor her confession. It was long on guilt and short on details. Hawkeye didn’t know the names of anyone she’d killed. She remembered locations – but hazily. The details she could give on Mustang were slightly better, and the Prosecutor took careful notes, but it still wasn’t as much to go on as he’d like.

                “Is there anything else you’d like to know, sir?” Hawkeye asked. He wondered if the ‘sir’ was respect or habit.

                “Did you kill any civilians?”

                “Sir?”

                The prosecutor waved a hand. “It’s not illegal for soldiers to kill on the battlefield, provided it’s other soldiers they’re killing.”

                “It was genocide,” Hawkeye said bluntly.

                “I’m aware,” the Prosecutor said dryly. As a lawyer, he was accustomed to putting aside his emotions and dealing just with the facts, but there were some wounds that went deep. He took a deep breath. “There are Ishvalans living here in Ishval who killed Amestrian soldiers during the Civil War,” he explained. “As the saying goes, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. I can’t go prosecuting Amestrian soldiers for being soldiers unless I want some of my kinsmen to face the same. But killing Ishvalan civilians would violate the Ishval Annexation Act. That’s still on the books because it’s the law that declared Ishval to be part of Amestris. And since it was signed by the Parliament – back when the Parliament had any real power, to boot – as well as the then President, it supersedes Presidential Decree #306. And the Ishval Annexation Act has some fancy language about the military protecting Ishvalan civilians, when it comes down to it. So I ask again, Lieutenant, did you kill any civilians?”

                Hawkeye clenched her fists as they rested on her knees and looked down, thinking hard. “I…I don’t know, sir. It was hard to tell.”

                “Blame Bradly for that one,” the Prosecutor said. “He withdrew Amestris from the Conventions of 1836, which had some very specific rules about how soldiers had to identify themselves. Once that went away, the identification of soldiers became a lot looser.”

                “So what, sir?” Hawkeye asked. “I go free?”

                “I can’t charge you based on vagueness. It’s not good for precedent.”

                “But it’s not right!” Hawkeye protested. “I’m guilty.”

                The prosecutor gave a small smile, the kind that didn’t hold any mirth. “May ask your mother’s maiden name?”

                “What?”

                “The name your mother had before she married, Lieutenant. What was it?”

                Hawkeye grit her teeth. “Grumman. It was Grumman.”

                “Oh, was it now?” the Prosecutor asked, although he already knew the answer. He’d known the answer before Hawkeye even though to come to Ishval to confess. A good lawyer always knew the answer to a question before asking it, and a really good lawyer knew the answer before he knew he had to ask the question.

                “Yes.”

                “Any relation to our beloved Führer?”

                “He’s my grandfather.”

                “Oh, is he now? And what do you think your granddaddy would do if his cherished granddaughter got throw in the slammer?”

                Hawkeye didn’t answer at first. Finally, she said, “He’d be upset.”

                “Yes, ‘upset’. Very ‘upset’, I imagine.”

                “So I get off scot free because of my family connections? I didn’t even know Grumman and I were related until a few years ago!”

                “More or less,” the Prosecutor said. “Way of world, I’m afraid. It’ll be a plea deal. I’ll find some minor charge, you can plead guilty to it, and we’ll call our conversation today ‘time served’. And if we need you to testify against the Flame Alchemist, we’ll give you a call.”

                They spent the next two hours working out the details and getting the paperwork in order. Then Hawkeye went back to Central and Mustang. The Prosecutor figured that Grumman must have been positively overjoyed to see Hawkeye return without shackles because he pardoned Scar not long after.

                The Prosecutor tried to pursue a case against Brigadier General Roy Mustang, but the trail soon went cold. He had some evidence and Hawkeye’s testimony, but it wasn’t enough to ensure a conviction. His feeling on the matter only intensified after the trial of Major Alex Louis Armstrong. That was a debacle. First, Alex’s family rushed back from Xing and between his parent’s money and his own money from being a State Alchemist, he had enough lawyers to succeed in getting the trial to be held in Central instead of Ishval. In front of an all-Amestrian jury, Alex’s lawyer put his little sister Catherine on the stand and she sobbed about how much she’d miss her only big brother if he went to prison. And while there was never any proof that members of the jury had been bribed, the Prosecutor had his suspicions. In the end, Alex was found Not Guilty on all charges. The most that could be said was that he got a slap on the wrist for tearing off his shirt in court when the verdict was read.

                Time passed. Roy Mustang was reassigned to East City, and the rebuilding of Ishval continued. Major Miles was promoted to Colonel Miles. Ishval’s cropping industry picked up, and the Briggs soldiers mostly went home. Some of the Briggs soldiers opted to stay under Colonel Miles’ command, and some of the Ishvalan troops Miles had trained went to serve in Briggs, which pacified Grumman somewhat. The north-bound Ishvalan soldiers brought cumin, paprika, and cayenne pepper seasoning with them. Major General Armstrong was reluctant to allow these, arguing that they were bad for the constitution of the soldiers and for the facilities at Briggs, but after some persuading from her new assistant Naomi Kanda, she agreed to allow the spices in rationed quantities. (This was a contributing factor in Kanda being promoted from Private to Lance Corporal.)

                Then, the day after Winry Rockbell got engaged, the Prosecutor learned that there was a witness to Mustang’s crimes. Her name was Meital Pasternack, and she had actually been in Ishval for some time, having arrived the same day that Marcoh began his work restoring the Immortal Legion. She was a victim of the Dental Alchemist and had arrived with neither tongue nor teeth. The doctors at the hospital (which had eventually been named the New Light Memorial Hospital) had helped with the latter, and everyone had helped her get settled in to her new life. Still, it had taken her time before she was willing to tell anyone what had happened to her. The first person she spoke to was her priest, Scar, and he directed her to the Prosecutor, who took down her testimony. And with that, the case against the Flame Alchemist was hot again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I intended the Conventions of 1836 to be the FMA equivalent of the Geneva Conventions. Writing this fan fic, I had to make some decisions. Given that Father had secretly ruled Amestris for centuries, what actions of Father and those who obeyed him would actually be illegal and thus subject to prosecution?


	2. Selection of the Jury

                The formal charges were prepared by the Prosecutor, his son-in-law Lucas, and his grandson Luke. Lucas had passed the bar exam only a month prior, as his legal training had been put on hold when the family had to flee their home in East City during the genocide. (After much pleading from his daughter Ruth, the Prosecutor had left his home in Ishval to come live with them to escape the violence of the Civil War.) Lucas was Amestrian, and the menial, low-profile jobs he was able to take in East City had kept the family afloat in the years before the Day of Reckoning. When the Ishvalan Reconstruction Project began, the Prosecutor had persuaded the whole family to come back to Ishval with him, and Lucas had finally finished his legal schooling at the new university there. Luke, while still only a teenager, also wanted to be a lawyer when he grew up, and so he helped his father and grandfather out when he wasn’t at school. Ruth, who ran a restaurant, joked that she was the odd one out.

                The Prosecutor spoke with Lieutenant Hawkeye before the charges were formally drawn up, to let her know that she would need to testify. She, in turn, spoke with her grandfather and reported back to the Prosecutor that he’d assured her that he’d let the trial against Mustang go forth, even though Mustang was Hawkeye’s beau and a favorite of Grumman’s, if that’s what Hawkeye really wanted. The Prosecutor wasn’t sure how much he trusted Grumman to keep his word there, but it was better than nothing.

                The charges were delivered to 2nd Lieutenant Jean Havoc, who read the charges to Brigadier General Roy Mustang.

                “Court summons,” he said to Roy, who sat behind his desk in his office in East City. “Says here you’re to stand trial for the murder of Meir and Meira Pasternack.”

                Roy stared at Havoc uncomprehendingly. “Who are Meir and Meira Pasternack?”

                “No clue, sir, but apparently you murdered them.”

                “Better lawyer up, then,” Roy said, and began making some phone calls.

                Roy selected a whole team of lawyers. The choice of the head lawyer came down to Clarence Abbey and August Cockburn. Both joined the team, but Roy chose Abbey for the top position. Cockburn had an affiliation with the Legion for Amestrian Purity. Cockburn swore that he was only their lawyer, and that he didn’t own a white bedsheet himself. (That was the newest thing with the Legion. They’d tie their bedsheets around themselves like togas while marching through the streets. Roy boggled at how ridiculous they looked.) In any sense, Roy was wary enough about Cockburn to deny him the top position; the Legion had made more than a few attempts on Roy’s life.

                Abbey swiftly convinced Roy of his worth by succeeding in getting the judge to have the trial held in Central City instead of Ishval. (Abbey reported back that the Prosecutor wanted the trial held there, and from that Roy deduced that the Pasternacks had been Ishvalan.) Roy hadn’t set foot in Ishval since the genocide. Even though he was technically in charge of the Ishvalan Reconstruction Project, he relied heavily on Colonel Miles.

                Roy dispatched Breda to see what information he could find about the Pasternacks and then relaxed. He dismissed Havoc and Fuery, as well.

                “Well, this is it,” he told Riza. “Trial time.”

                “You’re going to plead not guilty?” she asked neutrally.

                He nodded. “I still don’t know who the Pasternacks were. Besides, it’s for the best if they have to prove me guilty.”

                “Yes, sir,” she said.

                “I’ve told you that you don’t have to call me ‘sir’ when we’re alone,” he teased Riza.

                “Maybe I like calling you ‘sir’,” Riza said, moving closer. Roy was relieved to see her acting less stiff. He figured she must be worried about the trial.

                Roy ran his fingers along Riza’s thigh. “Well, I suppose if you’re going to call me ‘sir’, the least I could do is-” There was a knock at the door. Roy took his hand away, and Riza pulled back. While they’d been living together since not long after the Day of Reckoning, their relationship was against numerous regulations.

                Next was the matter of selecting the jury. That was a long day for the Prosecutor, Abbey, and the judge. The Prosecutor was dismayed when he had to burn through his limited number of peremptory challenges quickly. He knew better than to say anything, but the judge was much more lenient on Abbey when it came to for cause exclusions. There were three – _three_ – members of the Legion for the Amestrian Purity that the Prosecutor had to exclude with a peremptory challenge instead of a for cause exclusion.

                After that, the Prosecutor was able to exclude Kain Fuery on the grounds that he worked for the defendant, but he was unable to make a sufficiently persuasive case for Vato Falman. The judge took the position that lots of soldiers had served under the defendant in the past, and as the Prosecutor had burned through all of his peremptory challenges, Falman was acceptable for the jury unless Abbey wished to exclude him. (Abbey didn’t.)

                Had the judge been fairer, the Prosecutor might have excluded Amue Armstrong with a peremptory challenge. She might have been Major General Armstrong’s sister, but she was also Major Armstrong’s sister, and the Prosecutor didn’t like unknowns. He took a stab at having her excluded for cause, but he wasn’t surprised when the judge denied his argument. He half-wondered if Abbey might exclude her on similar grounds, but Abbey had no objections.

                There was one woman who trembled whenever the Prosecutor asked her a question, no matter how gently and kindly he phrased his questions but who was fine whenever Abbey addressed her. Nevertheless, she swore up and down that she held no biases against Ishvalans, and so the judge allowed her on the jury.

                The prospective juror who listed his occupation (under oath) as “circus lion” was probably the most unique. While Abbey was trying to clarify if the prospective juror meant “circus lion tamer”, the Prosecutor finally recognized the man as a member of that circus that sometimes came to Ishval. The realization dawned only seconds before the prospective juror agreed to demonstrate and shifted into his lion-man form. The judge and Abbey were both very taken aback, but after the prospective juror shifted back into his man form and there was much discussion, the judge ruled that the prospective juror was human enough to be on the jury and Abbey couldn’t think of any real reason to exclude him.

                They had eleven of the twelve jurors when the Prosecutor heard the judge order that prospective juror “Ezekiel Keystone” be brought in. The Prosecutor’s eyebrow went up. He belatedly realized that he really should say something lest the situation end badly, but he was too late. The door to the courtroom was already opening.

                Scar strode powerfully into the room, scowling and clearly annoyed that he had to be there. Abbey let out a scream of terror and dived behind the judge, who flung his gravel at Scar. It missed by several feet, and the judge looked sheepish when Scar just stared at him.

                “He was pardoned,” the Prosecutor tried to remind them amid the chaos, but no one was paying him any heed.

                Eventually, the judge was able to restore a semblance of order to the court. This was after a terrified court clerk inched past Scar in order to recover the judge’s mislaid gravel.

                “But where’s Ezekiel Keystone?” Abbey demanded, looking confused. Scar raised his hand, and the Prosecutor sighed.

                “You didn’t think his parents – may they rest forever in peace with Isvhala – named their bouncing baby boy _Scar_ , did you?” he scoffed.

                “Well, I supposed not,” Abbey admitted. Scar was sworn in, and Abbey shakily asked him his first question. “Under the oath you have just sworn, do you believe that you could be unbiased in the trial against Brigadier General Roy Mustang?”

                “No,” Scar said.

                “Then, You Honor, I’d like to have Scar excluded from the jury on the grounds that he would be biased.”

                “Granted,” the judge said.

                “I knew I came here for nothing,” Scar muttered as he left. He gave Abbey a nasty look as he walked passed, and Abbey quailed. The Prosecutor wasn’t confident that Abbey’s knees would hold, and he suspected that Abbey might have to change his pants afterward.

                The judge called the next juror in, and the Prosecutor recognized her as Mistress Shan. His heart sank. So far, there wasn’t a single Ishvalan on the jury, and he didn’t expect Mistress Shan to make the cut, either. It was all but impossible to find an Ishvalan who wasn’t hurt by some State Alchemist, and Abbey had successfully argued that this meant that they couldn’t be trusted to be unbiased in the trial against Mustang. The Prosecutor seethed quietly. So every Ishvalan was biased, but _Falman_ wasn’t? Members of the Legion weren’t?

                “I said, does the prosecution have any questions for the prospective juror?” the judge asked in an irritated tone, and the Prosecutor’s head snapped up. He realized he had missed something, and he mentally chastised himself.

                “No questions, your honor,” the Prosecutor said, trying to figure out what it was that he missed.

                “In that case,” the judge said, “the full jury has been selected. You are all dismissed.”

                The Prosecutor looked around wildly. He could hardly believe it, but Mistress Shan was being handed her juror information by a clerk. His eyes went to Abbey. He still looked rather disheveled, and the Prosecutor realized that Scar’s appearance had shook him up more than the Prosecutor had realized.

                “You didn’t exclude her?” the Prosecutor whispered as he walked past, his tone incredulous.

                “Exclude…” Abbey muttered, and then his eyes focused hard on to Mistress Shan. “Oh no! I said, dear Leto, I said ‘No questions’, didn’t I?”

                The Prosecutor breathed out slowly. It wasn’t as much of a victory as he would have liked, but it was better than he’d gotten during the Major Armstrong trial.


	3. Opening Statements

                While the jury was selected, the witnesses for the prosecution and the defense made their travel to Central City for the trial. Some of them, like Madam Christmas, already lived there. Riza Hawkeye arrived with Roy Mustang without saying a word. Major General Armstrong’s assistant – Lance Corporal Kanda – was a witness, and she traveled to Central with her superior, who wasn’t a witness but was keen to watch her rival squirm. The chief witness arrived, accompanied by her translator.

                The Prosecutor paid another visit to Dr. Knox. They’d already worked out a plea deal, but the Prosecutor had a sense about these things. He arrived to discover that Dr. Knox was smoking more than usual. After he opened the door to let the Prosecutor in, the Prosecutor found him trying to light another cigarette, despite already having one smoldering in his mouth.

                “Good evening,” the Prosecutor said. “We’ve got a busy week ahead of us. You ready?”

                “Yeah, yeah,” Dr. Knox said distantly. He took the unlit cigarette out of his mouth and tried to snub it on the counter. Seeing the process fail, he blinked in confusion and then let out a mild swear. Throwing out the unlit cigarette, he placed the lit cigarette in the tea pot. Then he pulled another cigarette out of the pack and attempted to smoke it without lighting it first.

                The Prosecutor patted his arm reassuringly. “You’re doing the right thing,” he said soothingly. It was the chief witness who’d led him to Dr. Knox. The man had come up in reports previously, from the testimony Marcoh had provided Scar, but it was from the chief witness that they’d learned that Dr. Knox had worked with Roy Mustang.

                “My wife and son came to see me,” Dr. Knox blurted out abruptly. “This is hard on them, but my son says I’m doing the right thing. That’s why I’ve got to do this. That’s why I’m doing this.”

                The Prosecutor made more soothing noises. His daughter had used to tease him that he was cold hearted in the way he could act like horrible criminals were skittish animals, but it came with the territory. If the Prosecutor wanted a whale, he had to handle the little fish gently lest they swim away. He bid his farewells and left to prepare for the trial.

                In Ishval, Scar and Miles made their plans. Scar had to report to Central to see if he’d be selected for the jury, and Miles was one of the witnesses. Accompanying them was their adopted daughter, Adva. Scar and Miles had made arrangements with Winry to meet them in Central, as Adva was finally old enough to get her first automail surgery. As Miles was busy with the trial, it was Scar who took her to her first appointment.

                “And you said you’re not going to be on the jury, right?” Winry asked, after he and Adva arrived at the office where Winry would be working. She’s made arrangements with a Central automail shop to borrow their location for the surgery, since conflicting schedules meant that it couldn’t be done in Ishval or Rush Valley.

                “Yes,” Scar said. “They did not want me.” There was a pause. “I did not think they would. Still, I’m glad. It means we don’t have to reschedule today’s appointment.”

                Winry laughed a chuckling laugh. “No, I’d imagine not.” She looked wistful suddenly. “It’s a shame Ed couldn’t be here for the trial. Brigadier General Mustang was his commanding officer.”

                “Yes,” Scar said. “The Prosecutor had been hoping to talk to him.”

                “Ed wouldn’t have liked that,” Winry said.

                Scar shifted uncomfortably. “There can’t be justice if Amestrians won’t testify against their friends.”

                Winry looked at the clock on the wall, rather than Scar. “Mistress Shan said that you stood trial.”

                “Yes,” Scar said. His next set of words came out in a rush. “I appreciate you doing this, for Adva-”

                Adva, who’d been reading quietly in a chair while the grown-ups talked about grown-up things, looked up when she heard her name. Winry smiled at her and then addressed Scar. “I’d never hold anything _you_ did against _her_.”

                “Thank you. And congratulations. Miles told me about your engagement.”

                Winry laughed, glad for a change in conversation. “Yep, that’s Ed all right. Proposes and then hops on the first train to another country he sees.” She gave a mock long suffering sigh.

                Scar almost laughed, too. He didn’t quite, but he nearly did. Being in Central tended to put him on edge. “Miles has to be on hand to testify, but I’ll be here the entire time for the surgery.”

                “I’ll take good care of her,” Winry assured him. She turned to Adva. “Are you ready, sweetie?”

                “Yes, Miss Winry!” Adva said and bounced to her feet.

                Adva’s first surgery was to set up a connector that would allow the nerves remaining in her right leg to be attached to the automail leg that Winry had built for her. This surgery took place on the same day as the first day of the trial. She and Scar would stay overnight, and the next day Winry would run the usual tests to make sure everything was in order.

                The judge took his spot on the stand, the twelve jurors filed into their juror box, the two lead lawyers prepped their notes, Roy Mustang took his seat between two of his other lawyers, and the crowd of observers filled into the upper deck to watch the show. Reporters from all the reputable newspapers were there, along with reporters from several of the less reputable ones. (The Eclipsed Sun had chosen instead to follow up on reports of giant, orange alligators in the sewers beneath Central, but even they hoped to bring Roy Mustang into the story eventually.)

                The prosecution’s opening statement came first. “There’s no question, honorable members of the jury,” the Prosecutor began. “Roy Mustang is guilty. We all know about Presidential Order #306. We all know what the State Alchemists did in Ishval. Under the old regime, the defendant was praised as the Hero of the Ishvalan Civil War for the atrocities that he committed. But things are different now, and he needs to face justice for his crimes.”

                The defense’s opening statement came second. “We all remember the Day of Reckoning. We all remember that… _feeling_ …when it was like we weren’t with ourselves. Well, if it weren’t for Roy Mustang, that feeling would have never ended. This man here – right here – stopped a coup and saved us all from that fate. And what has he done since then? Championed the rebuilding of Ishval! Prosecute him? The Ishvalans should be thanking him!”

                With that, the trial had begun.


	4. The Prosecution's Witnesses, Day One

                The defense did not receive the witness list until twelve minutes before the trial was set to begin. Roy and his team were huddled in a small, unused room of the court house. He also had Breda on hand. Breda was better at finding things out than half the lawyers on his team.

                “Miles?” Roy seethes quietly when he saw the name of the first witness.

                “He’s your subordinate, isn’t he?” Abbey asked.

                “Yes,” Roy said, sharing a glance with Breda but not saying any more. Roy seethed inwardly at what he perceived as a knife in his back, but he silently vowed to maintain his honor nonetheless.

                Miles hadn’t started out in charge of the Ishvalan Reconstruction Project. Initially, Roy had planned to handle it himself. Reasoning that he knew East City best, he and Riza had made a trip to the slums outside of it, where Roy knew hazily that surviving Ishvalans lived. That trip had ended with him empty-handed. The same was true for the next trip. They’d found signs of an Ishvalan camp, but not a single Ishvalan was in sight by time they got there. On the third trip, they’d managed to corner an old, Ishvalan woman. Unable to flee, she’d smacked Roy across the face with her sandal. Then she’d hobbled off wearing only one shoe.

                Major General Olivier Mira Armstrong had heard about his misfortune and come to gloat before a fourth trip could be made.

                “Like you could do better?” Roy had seethed after she had laughed in his face.

                “Sure I can,” Major General Armstrong had boasted. Roy found himself both relieved and annoyed when she had. After only a day, she’d reported back with a dozen Ishvalan nervously interested in resettlement. When she saw the surprised look on his face, she graciously informed him that all the credit was due to Major Miles. Naturally, Roy had promptly asked to borrow Major Miles for the rebuilding efforts.

                He had wondered, though, and he had sent Breda to investigate. It took Breda three weeks to get to the bottom of it, but the truth came out eventually. Major Miles was Ishvalan on his maternal grandfather’s side. His official records had been doctored. Fake names and fake addresses had been given for part of his family. Breda had had to conduct discrete interviews with the neighbors to track down Miles’ real familial connections. Major General Armstrong’s fingerprints were all over the cover-up, but if the forgery every came to light, it would have been on Major Miles’ head that it would have fallen. So Roy had kept quiet about what he had discovered. Now Colonel Miles was going to testify against him.

                Roy’s eyes glanced further down the page, and he spat out the coffee he was drinking. One of the names on the list was Riza Hawkeye.

                “My lieutenant!” he exclaimed. “I need to talk to her!”

                Abbey wiped the coffee off his face and then placed his hand on Roy’s chest and firmly pushed him back into his seat. “You’ll do no such thing,” Abbey said.

                Cockburn looked up from his notes and said briskly, “It’ll no be good if you get off on murder only to go down on witness tampering. You’re much younger than me, but any guilty plea will be bad for your career.”

                “You’ll not to talk to Riza Hawkeye until after the trial has completed,” Abbey instructed him.

                “But-”

                “Not a word,” Cockburn agreed. The other lawyers in the room nodded their heads, as well.

                Colonel Miles was the first to testify for the prosecution, after the physical evidence had been presented. By the time of the trial, Miles had reported to Roy Mustang for two years, and in those two years, Miles had taken contemporaneous, detailed notes on every conversation he’d had with his superior. It was a habit he’d developed in his years working for Major General Armstrong, although in her case there were omissions during the parts where she’d had to gank (and then cover up the ganking of) any superior officer who’d given her unconscionable orders. (Both Mt. Briggs and Ft. Briggs were dangerous places. Anything could happen to a visiting officer who was too careless. Giving Major General Armstrong orders she didn’t like constituted being too careless.)

                The Prosecutor had rehearsed the scene with Miles beforehand, as he did with all of his witnesses, so Miles was at ease on the witness stand. The Prosecutor read from excerpts he’d copied from Miles’ notes.

                “Is it true that Brigadier General Mustang told you on April 7th, 1915 the following: ‘After what I did in Ishval, after all the lives I took, I want to do everything in my power to restore the Ishvalan’s homeland.’?”

                “Yes,” Miles said.

                Miles and the Prosecutor went back and forth like that. Mustang had never been too careless when talking to Miles, and the name Pasternack had never been mentioned. Still, even his vague statements, when paired with the appropriate testimony from others, could prove damning.

                The only other witness to testify on the first day of the trial was Lance Corporal Naomi Kanda, as opening arguments and the presentation of physical evidence had taken up a good bit of the day. Kanda was a young Ishvalan woman recruited to the military by Miles under the Ishvalan Reconstruction Project.

                Kanda took the stand and nervously waited for the Prosecutor to ask the questions. She was less at ease that Colonel Miles had been. Not even the rehearsals and a year at Major Armstrong’s side could change the fact that she was barely twenty-two. She was sworn in, and the Prosecutor began his questions.

                “Can you tell me what town you grew up in?” the Prosecutor started gently.

                “Asbec,” Kanda said promptly and then winced. “I mean River Town.”

                “Objection!” Abbey injected. “She’s either from Asbec or from River Town.”

                “If the prosecution will clarify?” the Judge said.

                “Do you mean that you lived in River Town before moving to Asbec?” the Prosecutor asked.

                “Yes,” Kanda said, looking relieved.

                “Why did you move to Asbec?” the Prosecutor asked.

                “We heard that the State Alchemists were coming.”

                “Do you know what district River Town was considered to be in by the Amestrian military?”

                “Yes,” Private Kanda said. “We were in District 27.”

                “That will be all,” the Prosecutor said. One piece of evidence he had presented to the jury was a copy of an order sending Mustang to destroy District 27. He’d probably get hit on cross, as the Pasternacks hadn’t lived in District 27, but he wanted to get the jury to start thinking of Mustang as a murderer.

                The judge dismissed the court, and the attendees went their different way. Roy arrived at the hotel room that one of his lawyers had rented for him after discovering that Riza was on the witness list. (Roy had grumbled that on top of everything, he couldn’t even stay in his own apartment.) There he was met by Breda, who had spent the day doing some snooping.

                “Could I talk to you alone, sir?” Breda asked quietly. Leaving his lawyers in the living room, Roy and Breda went to the bedroom.

                “What did you discover?”

                Breda waved his copy of the witness list. “I wanted to know who Meital Pasternack was, given that she shares a name with the couple you allegedly killed. So I made some phone calls.”

                “And?”

                “It looks like she’s the daughter of Meir and Meira Pasternack. She works at the New Light Memorial Hospital in Ishval.” Breda paused. “Under the hospital director, Keren Shan.”

                “Is that name supposed to mean something to me?”

                “Keren Shan is one of the jurors.”

                “Abbey!” Roy bellowed, coming into the living room of the hotel.

                “What is it, sir?” Abbey asked.

                “You’re fired!” Roy said.

                “But sir-”

                “The prosecution’s star witness’ boss is one of the jurors,” Roy snapped. “Get out. Cockburn, you’re now lead.”

                “Thank you, sir,” Cockburn said, as Abbey – red faced – gathered up his things and left.

                “How bad is this?” Roy asked.

                “Bad,” Cockburn admitted, “but I’ve handled worse.”

                As Roy Mustang had been heading to his hotel to receive the news of that setback, the jurors were heading to the room in the courthouse where they were being sequestered. As far as Mistress Keren Shan could tell, the room where they were staying was located in the attic. There was a case of winding stairs to take them there.

                Mistress Shan glanced down at her lame leg and gripped her cane more tightly. “No lift?” she asked.

                “I can give you a lift,” she heard a deep voice say. Looking behind her (and up, rather) she found herself facing one of her fellow jurors, a very tall Amestrian woman. “I am Amue Armstrong,” the woman said, “and helping the elderly is a tradition that has been passed down in the Armstrong family for generations.”

                “I suppose so,” Mistress Shan said. She wasn’t so much surprised that Amue could lift her as she was that Amue did it with only one hand. She cradled Mistress Shan against her bosom and strode up the steps. The stairs came up through a hole in the middle of the attic landing. There was a large, round common area with couches and tables. All around the common area were twelve doors, each with a name of a juror on it. Inside, the jurors found a simple bedroom and bath, along with the belongings they had packed for their sequestration. Before long, food was brought to the common area, and they sat down to eat.

                “This food is a disgrace to the Armstrong family name,” Amue said after they dug in.

                “It’s better than the stuff we used to get from the Briggs soldiers,” Mistress Shan said.

                One of the other jurors gave a low whistle. Mistress Shan had gathered that he was something of a vagrant from Central City; some of the other jurors had complained about his inclusion. “This is a nice setup,” he said.

                “It is,” Mistress Shan agreed. “Wish it had a lift, though. One of us isn’t an alchemist by any chance, are we?”

                “I thought,” Amue intoned, “that Ishvalans did not like alchemy.”

                “Opinions change,” Mistress Shan admitted. “Pretty much all of Ishval that has been rebuilt has been rebuilt with alchemy.”

                Another juror nodded his head. “I’m from Liore. Sell the best coffee there. Back before all the riots, there was a fraud of a preacher man conning everyone. It was a couple of alchemists that exposed him.”

                “A State Alchemist fixed my baby carriage,” said one of the other jurors. She tapped her finger against his jaw. “That said, he added a drill to the front.”

                “A State Alchemist saved me from eastern terrorists,” said another one of the jurors, who Mistress Shan had gathered was the wife of some important military official named Halcrow. “They took over the train and took my family and I hostage, but that young man saved us.”

                “Hey!” said another one of the jurors, “I remember that. The Train Job, right? I helped stopped that. Gave one of those terrorists a good whack with my shovel.”

                “I wouldn’t mind having more State Alchemist around,” said another juror. “Back on the Day of Reckoning, a bunch of Ishvalans broke into my house and they- they- they laid a piece of paper down on the floor!”

                “Same here,” said another juror, who had a non-automail prosthetic arm. “Remember back when that Ishvalan was going around killing all those people? Well, he stole my sunglasses! It would have been nice to have a State Alchemist around then.”

                “Some State Alchemists are good,” said another juror, whose name Mistress Shan had caught as Heinkel, “but some of them taste bad.” Everyone looked at him. “Bit one once,” he explained and then coughed nervously. “I guess we’ll see what category Roy Mustang falls in.” Under his breath he added, “And I completely failed to read the room. Guess I should have left the jokes at the circus.”

                “Roy Mustang is a good man,” said another juror. “I’m Vato Falman, and I served under him when he was a Colonel.”

                “So unbiased,” Mistress Shan muttered under her breath. The conversation had rather gotten away from her.

                One of the other jurors who hadn’t spoken yet heard her. “Hey!” he said. “I’ve got no opinions about alchemists one way or another. I’m just an arm wrestler from Rush Valley.” The man had two automail arms, and Mistress Shan was eager to change the subject.

                “Did Winry Rockbell do your arms, by any chance?” Mistress Shan asked him.

                “Nah,” he said. “Never heard of her. Is she from Rush Valley?”

                “Yes, she apprentices there. Maybe you’ve heard of her master, Garfiel?”

                “Oh, everyone’s heard of Garfiel,” the Arm Wrestler from Rush Valley informed her.

                From there, the conversation turned to small talk until it was time for bed, at which point Mistress Shan, Home Invasion, Drill Carriage, Falman, Heinkel, Central City Vagrant, Arm Wrestler from Rush Valley, Stolen Glasses, Best Coffee in Liore, Amue, Train Job, and Mrs. Halcrow turned in for the night.


	5. The Prosecution’s Witnesses, Day Two

                The last three witnesses for the prosecution testified the second day. While there were only three of them, it took the full day to get through their testimonies. The problem started when the court was called the order, and the first witness was called to the stand. The first witness was Meital Pasternack, daughter of Meir and Meira Pasternack. Accompanying her was her translator, Deborah Amsel.

                There was uproar in the court when Deborah approached the stand. “What in Leto’s name??” someone screamed from the upper balcony. One of Mustang’s lawyers gave a shriek. A juror fainted, forcing a clerk to fetch smelling salts. The judge banged his gravel on his stand so hard that the Prosecutor thought he was going to go deaf, but it was a full minute before the court settled down. Throughout it all, Deborah Amsel stood there, uncomfortable and unsure what to do. The Prosecutor, though, was beginning to realize what the issue was. He mentally kicked himself for not having realized it ahead of time.

                “If the prosecution and the lead lawyer for the defense could please approach my stand?” the judge asked acidly. The Prosecutor and August Cockburn edged forward. The Prosecutor wondered what had happened to Clarence Abbey, who he hadn’t seen all morning. Cockburn looked baffled, although he was trying to hide it.

                “Yes, your honor?” the Prosecutor asked cautiously.

                “What is _that_?” the judge demanded, gesturing at Deborah with his gravel.

                “My lead witness’ translator,” the Prosecutor explained. “She’s non-verbal, so we’ll need someone who can translate her sign language.”

                “Is that so?” the judge asked.

                “Yes, your honor.”

                “Then why does she look like- like-” The judge floundered for words. The Prosecutor glanced at Deborah. He honestly didn’t think she looked that bad. Her skin was a pleasing brown color, even if it had no variation in shade or tone across her whole body. Certainly, her face didn’t have quite as many nerves or muscles as it should, but it was a huge improvement from a year prior. And yes, if you caught her at the wrong angle, you could see the hinges in her joints, but all in all, she looked very nearly like a regular human. But, then, perhaps being so close yet not quite there was the problem. And unlike everyone in Ishval, the judge and most of the court attendees hadn’t had over a year to get used to the limitations of the Revived.

                “Oh, that,” the Prosecutor said as innocently as possible. “Well, you see, some of the Immortal Legion survived the Day of Reckoning. So a team of doctors at the New Light Memorial Hospital extracted the Philosopher’s Stones from within them and split the souls that made up each Stone into its own, separate body. We’ve got a holiday now, to commemorate the day the last soul was restored. It’s called the Festival of the Revived. There’s lots of exciting things happening in Ishval, really.” He restrained himself from making a comment about how the Amestrian newspapers were fond of depicting the Ishvalan Reconstruction Project as a colossal failure.

                The judge stared at him and blinked. Then he addressed Cockburn. “Philosopher’s Stones? Human souls? Cockburn, do you know what the prosecution is on about?”

                “Some,” Cockburn admitted, “although the, uh, Revived is new to me.” The Prosecutor wasn’t surprised. Cockburn had been the lawyer for the presidential aide who’d gotten much of the blame for the events of the Day of Reckoning.

                “Am I wrong in guessing that this is all classified? Or at least supposed to be classified?”

                “Pretty much,” Cockburn said.

                The judge addressed the Prosecutor. “What was your reason for bringing this, this Revived woman here today?”

                “She’s a good sign language translator,” the Prosecutor protested. “We don’t treat people differently in Ishval just because of how they look.”

                “I don’t know why you’re having the dumb girl testify anyway,” Cockburn said. “It’d be like letting a dog testify.” The Prosecutor glared at him, but he waited to see what the judge would say.

                “I’ll allow it,” the judge said. “There is, after all, a precedent for allowing dogs to testify.” The Prosecutor resisted the urge to glare at him, too. It wasn’t worth losing the case. The judged continued, “I would like her to have a different translator, however. Is there someone else who could serve that purpose?”

                “Sure,” the Prosecutor said. “If we send someone to Ishval, there are a number of quality translators who would be happy to come to court.”

                The judge rubbed his temples. “Anyone local?”

                “Only if you want to use Ezekiel Keystone,” the Prosecutor said. “He’s in town. Not too many people in Central are fluent in Ishvalan sign language.”

                The judge turned to Cockburn. “Is that acceptable? If only to avoid the Führer getting on our case for leaking classified information?”

                “I’m fine with that,” Cockburn said. The Prosecutor gave a court page instructions on where he could find Ezekiel Keystone (along with a warning that Ezekiel was Scar), and the judge dismissed Cockburn and the Prosecutor. A recess was called until the page returned.

                “I thought you’d make more of a fuss about Ezekiel,” the Prosecutor commented.

                “Why would I?” Cockburn asked slowly, looking loathe to ask a question he didn’t know the answer to.

                The Prosecutor started. “Dear Ishvala! Didn’t the other guy tell you?”

                “Tell me what?”

                The Prosecutor pressed his forehead into the palm of his hand. “Ezekiel Keystone is Scar. He was a prospective juror. The other guy got him excluded, obviously. I thought you knew.”

                “I’m going to strangle him,” Cockburn muttered, then added. “Ezekiel Keystone, huh? I don’t think it fits him. I thought it would be something like Killer McGee or Blockhead Murderson or Bloody Smith.”

                “None of those are Ishvalan names,” the Prosecutor said, glowering. He didn’t much like having Scar’s legal name in Cockburn’s mouth, but the world was different now. It wasn’t like it was when he was a boy, or even like it was when he was living in the slums outside of East City. When one lived in a little community where everyone could know everyone else by sight, one could get away with not disclosing one’s name if one didn’t want to share that precious gift with someone. With Ishval being rebuilt, it seemed like names had to be used for just about everything. He sighed as the two men parted ways for the rest of the recess. Of course, when he was a boy, Ishval had been an independent country.

                The court page found Scar, Winry, and little Adva just before Winry was set to begin the tests on Adva’s new connectors. Winry would need to ensure that all of the wires she had connected to Adva’s nerves were working correctly. Once she was sure of that, she needed to put a cap on the end of Adva’s knee to contain the wires. The cap would allow the automail leg to interface with the connectors while protecting the connectors from the elements.

                “Now,” Winry was saying as the page came in, “as you get bigger, the cap will start to feel tight on your leg. When that happens, let your daddy know, and I’ll swap it out for a larger one.”

                “Which daddy?”

                “Either one,” Winry said, bopping Adva’s nose with her index finger, which caused Adva to giggle. Winry turned to the page, who was busy watching Scar nervously. “What is it?”

                The page explained the situation.

                “No,” Scar said flatly. “I’m needed here. Winry is about to start the tests.”

                The page shifted his weight from one foot to another. “But the witness won’t be able to testify without a translator!”

                “Didn’t a translator come with her?”

                “Yes, but she’s weird looking and the judge wants a different one,” the page explained. “Look, I don’t make the decisions. I just go fetch people. Please come?”

                Scar crossed his arms in front of his chest. “You don’t think I’ll be too weird looking?”

                “This is important!” the page wailed.

                “So is my daughter’s surgery.”

                “It’s okay, Daddy,” said Adva. Scar’s head turned to look at her. “I’ll be fine. Miss Winry will be with me the whole time.”

                Scar pointed at the page. “You. Out.”

                “But-”

                “I’ll come with you, but I would like a moment with my daughter first.”

                “Oh. Oh, good.” The page left, and Scar crouched down in front of Adva.

                “Now you be a good girl and listen to Miss Winry, okay?”

                “Yes, Daddy.”

                “Good. And you remember the location of the safe house, right?” Scar and Miles had set everything up before taking Adva out of Ishval.

                “I do,” Adva said, and whispered the location in Scar’s ear. It was a place deep in the sewers under Central. Scar and Miles had left supplies down there in case of an emergency.

                “And what do you do once you get there?”

                “Wait three days for you or Uniform Daddy or Master Isaiah to come get me.” (Miles was Uniform Daddy to Adva.)

                “And if none of us show?”

                “Pack up the remaining supplies and locate Mr. Yoki.”

                “You’ve memorized the circus schedule, right?”

                “Yes, Daddy,” Adva assured him. “Right now, the circus is doing a circuit in the south. From there, it will move to the west. I know all the towns it will visit.”

                “Good girl. And Mr. Yoki is to…?”

                “Smuggle me into Xing, where the Chang family will take care of me,” Adva said promptly. “I’ll be fine, Daddy.”

                Scar smiled at her. “It never hurts to be too cautious. I love you, sweetie.”

                “I love you, too.”

                Winry walked Scar to the door. “You lost your family, didn’t you?” she asked softly.

                “I have Miles and Adva,” Scar said.

                “Was it Mustang?” Winry asked.

                Scar shook his head. “Kimblee.”

                “I’m sorry,” Winry said.

                “He got what was coming to him,” Scar said. “Hopefully, Mustang will, as well.” With that, he and the page left for the court.

                Remembering how events had gone during the jury selection, the Prosecutor pulled a couple of court pages aside and sent them around the area, informing everyone that Scar would be coming to the court. There were still a number of murmurs of excitement when Scar entered, but the Prosecutor was relieved that there were no screams, and only one person fainted. (It was the same juror as previously. She was revived quickly.)

                Meital Pasternack was called back to the stand, and Scar went to stand beside her, to serve as a translator. There were classes offered in Ishval to learn the sign language used there, but the Prosecutor had been too busy with his work to have time to take them. He knew only a few of the signs, and he was only vaguely aware of how the grammar worked.

                As it was, Meital wouldn’t be signing right away. The first part of her testimony was written. She handed the paper to Scar, who read it. The Prosecutor hoped he would get through it all right. Unlike Deborah, Scar hadn’t had an opportunity to read it in advance. The Prosecutor had; it was a difficult read.

                “My name is Meital Pasternack,” Scar began. “My parents were Meir and Meira Pasternack. I remember how when I was a little girl I’d hear them joke with people about how similar their names were. They said it meant that they were destined to be together.

                “When I was twelve years old, the State Alchemists and the military came to the town where we lived. We were arrested, along with everyone else in the neighborhood. We were put in jail for several days with not much food and water and then taken to a building and made to wait in a long line in a hallway. We were at the very back. There were soldiers with guns all through the hall, so we couldn’t get away.

                “As we got closer to the front of the line, we could hear the screams. It was horrible. I couldn’t see what was happening until it was my mother’s turn. This man grabbed her and shoved her toward the wall. Then he snapped his fingers and she was completely enveloped in flames. Then the other man in the room took her corpse and put her in a pile. The both had notebooks they took notes in.

                “Then it was my father’s turn. The first man also grabbed him and shoved him toward the wall, but he killed him slowly, burning only the lower part of his body and then waiting to see how long it would take him to die.

                “Then it was my turn. The first man grabbed me, but before he could snap his fingers, a third man came into the room. He said, ‘Mustang! Knox! Stop it right now!’ Mustang was the man who snapped his fingers and caused the flames. Knox was the other man who examined the corpses.

                “‘What do you want?’ Mustang asked.

                “‘For you to stop incinerating _my_ patients!’ said the new man. ‘This group was supposed to go to me, Mustang, not you!’ He stamped his foot, like a spoiled child who hadn’t gotten the toy he’d wanted.

                “‘Then why did I get them?’

                “‘I don’t know. Probably some clerical error,’ said the new man. He came fully into the room, grabbed me by the arm, and started pulling me toward the door, away from Mustang and his finger snaps and his flames. ‘At least I get this one.’

                “‘Fine! Whatever,’ said Mustang, and the new man took me into the hall.

                “‘I am known as the Dental Alchemist,’ the man told me. ‘Now, now, it’s okay. I’m not going to kill you. Oh, I know, everyone here’s all Kill Kill Kill, but I think that’s such a waste, don’t you?’ I nodded. ‘Now, I suppose there’s some silver lining to this awful affair. I’m usually in such a rush rush rush that I can’t give my patients the proper attention they deserve. But you, my dear, I can spend time on. Oh, you’re going to be my work of art, I just know it.’ He lowered his voice to a whisper so the soldiers we were passing wouldn’t hear. ‘I’ll let you go when I’m done. They don’t like it, but it makes me happy to see my patients survive.’ He did let me go, eventually, which is why I didn’t die.”

                Scar finished reading through the testimony and handed Meital back the paper. The Prosecutor wasn’t surprised to see that she was crying silently. Scar looked like he was going to be ill. The Prosecutor felt much of the same, but he kept it together. He asked Meital a few, perfunctory questions and then dismissed her from the court. Deborah Amsel met her at the threshold to the court and offered her comfort as they left together. One of the questions had been for her to identify the man from her testimony, and she had immediately and unquestioningly pointed at Brigadier General Roy Mustang.

                The next and second to last witness would be Dr. Knox. The judge had forbid smoking in the courtroom, but Dr. Knox still opted to hold an unlit cigarette between his lips. The Prosecutor worried that that cigarette was the only thing keeping Dr. Knox from coming apart at the seams. He was not looking forward for the cross-examination by the defense.

                “Do you remember Meir and Meira Pasternack?” the Prosecutor asked.

                “Well, no,” Dr. Knox fumbled. “I mean, not by name. None of the Ishvalans that came to us had names.” The Prosecutor cocked an eyebrow, and Dr. Knox hastily corrected himself. “Obviously, they did have names, but we didn’t know them. They were just a batch of numbers. We never tried to find out more than that.”

                “But do you remember an incident where the Dental Alchemist took away the daughter of a man and woman that Brigadier General Mustang murdered?”

                “I didn’t know they were married,” Dr. Knox said, “but I yeah, I remember that incident. The Dental Alchemist made such a fuss about it, so it stood out in my mind.”

                “And Roy Mustang murdered them?”

                “Yeah,” Dr. Knox said. “I don’t remember the order, but that’s what he and I did. If Ishvalans were brought to us, he said them on fire and then I dissected them. Except for that girl, who the Dental Alchemist took away.”

                The Prosecutor had other questions for Dr. Knox, getting Dr. Knox to detail the bloody work he did with Mustang. His last question was for Dr. Knox to identify the man he worked with, and Dr. Knox instantly pointed to Roy Mustang, who stared impassively back at him until Dr. Knox’s arm quivered and then dropped.

                The last witness was a legal expert. The Prosecutor had him, in as simple and clear terms as possible, detail why Mustang’s crimes were illegal under Amestrian law at the time. The Prosecutor didn’t want Mustang wiggling out of a conviction because his lawyers argued that he’d been just following orders.

                That ended the legal proceedings for the day. Roy and his lawyers returned to his hotel room, where Roy collapsed on the recliner in the living room.

                “I remember the Pasternacks now,” he said, rubbing his temples.

                “Uh uh,” Cockburn said. “I can defend you better if you stop talking now.”

                “But-”

                “Legally, it doesn’t matter what you did. It matters what the jury can prove.”

                “They’ve done a pretty good job of that, don’t you think?”

                “It’s under control,” Cockburn assured him. “Just relax. Eat dinner, take a hot shower, and get some sleep.”

                “You cross-examine tomorrow?”

                “Yes,” Cockburn said mysteriously, “that, too.”

                “Okay,” Roy said. “I just wish I could talk to my lieutenant. I know, I know, I can’t. But I noticed that she didn’t testify. What they do? Put her on the witness list just to torment me?”

                Elsewhere, the jurors returned to their lofty sequestered quarters, where an argument over room assignments ensured.

                “I don’t feel safe here,” Home Invasion wailed. Mistress Shan supposed it had been a long day for her, what with her having fainted twice.

                “You’ve got a soldier right next door,” said Mrs. Halcrow, jerking her thumb at Falman.

                “What about the other side?” Home Invasion protested. Mistress Shan gave her a dirty look. Mistress Shan had the other room adjacent to Home Invasion’s room.

                “What if Shan and Heinkel swapped rooms?” suggested Drill Carriage.

                “I’m happy with my room,” Mistress Shan objected.

                “But it would be better if Heinkel was next to her,” Mrs. Halcrow argued.

                “He’s welcome to be,” Mistress Shan said shortly, “but I’m not moving.” The other jurors stared at her, and she flushed. Heinkel chuckled.

                “I’m fine with that if you are,” Heinkel said. “I don’t mind sleeping on the floor. That’s circus life for you. Honestly, I find beds to be too soft these days.”

                “Then that’s settled then,” Mistress Shan said.

                As the jurors were sorting out their room assignments, Dr. Knox was fidgeting at the train station. He was supposed to be taking the train back to the stop near his house. There, he’d smoke too many cigarettes and be scolded by the housekeeper his family had insisted he hire and then fail to get any sleep before the defense tore him a new one during cross-examination the next day.

                A train that would have taken him to his stop arrived and then pulled out of the station without him. That was the third one he’d let go by without getting on. He clenched the ticket in his hand. He didn’t think it would be so bad if he hadn’t gotten a plea deal. He was going to get some time, but not much. The Prosecutor had promised him that if he cooperated throughout the trial, he’d be out in six months. Mustang was the one they wanted. Mustang was the big fish. Dr. Knox was just the…just the…

                “Cowardly, back-stabbing, double-crossing hypocrite,” Dr. Knox muttered under his breath. He sighed and with the sigh made his decision. “Oh, damn it all to Hell.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mustang working with Dr. Knox on Nazi-style medical experiments was something in the manga that only got vaguely alluded to in Brotherhood.


	6. Cross-examination by the Defense

                On the third day of the trial, the defense cross-examined the witnesses for the prosecution. As the day was beginning, the Prosecutor checked with his son-in-law Lucas.

                “Are all the witnesses here?” the Prosecutor asked.

                “Everyone except Dr. Knox,” Lucas said.

                The Prosecutor looked at his watch. “He better get here soon.”

                “He doesn’t go on for a bit, though,” Lucas said. “We should be fine.”

                “Still, we’d better send Luke over to his house to make sure he’s not sick or something.”

                “I’ll send him off,” Lucas said.

                The first witness the defense called to the stand was Colonel Miles.

                “Please state your name,” Cockburn said.

                “Miles Keystone,” Miles said.

                Cockburn looked at his notes in mock surprise. “Not Bradley Miles? That was the name you enlisted in the military under, wasn’t it?”

                “It was,” Miles said, looking annoyed and then added, unprompted. “I legally changed it.”

                There was a flash or irritation on Cockburn’s face, and Miles pressed his lips together. He and the Prosecutor had rehearsed the cross-examination, and Cast Doubts on Miles’ Honesty was one of the tactics that the Prosecutor had thought the defense might pursue.

                “You know, it’s funny,” Cockburn said. “Your file says you’re Amestrian, but you almost look Ishvalan.” Miles hadn’t worn his snow goggles (which functioned just as well as sunglasses) to court. These days, after encouragement from Scar, he didn’t wear them unless it was sunny out.

                “Objection!” said the prosecutor. “That’s not a question.”

                “Sustained,” said the judge. “Please rephrase that as a question.”

                “Why do you look Ishvalan?” Cockburn asked.

                “My maternal grandfather was Ishvalan,” Miles explained. “I take after him in terms of looks.”

                Cockburn started at the revelation. Mustang in the seat for the defense sat up sharply. He hadn’t disclosed that information to Cockburn, and he hadn’t expected it to be revealed so readily. Miles looked at the men, clearly a bit confused by their reaction. Cockburn coughed and shuffled his notes. The Prosecutor winced internally. Purely from a professional standpoint, a good lawyer should never ask a question he didn’t know the answer to. The Prosecutor could see Cockburn hesitating. He could press this line of questioning, but that tactic could backfire, making Miles look sympathetic to the jurors rather than untrustworthy.

                “Did you inform Brigadier General Mustang of your ancestry?” Cockburn asked finally.

                “He never asked,” Miles said.

                “Keystone, that’s an Ishvalan name, isn’t it?”

                “Yes.”

                “Not only is it Ishvalan, but it’s the same as Scar’s legal last name, correct?”

                “Correct.”

                “Was that by design?”

                “Yes.”

                “You must really admire Scar, to style your name after his, yes?”

                “Yes,” Miles said and supplied no additional information.

                “No further questions,” Cockburn said, and Miles left the stand. The Prosecutor nodded at him as he exited the courtroom. Regardless of how the other cross-examinations went, they were at least starting out on good footing. Miles hadn’t panicked and provided information that wasn’t asked for that would be damaging to the case. The Prosecutor was also relieved to see that Cockburn hadn’t paid much heed to the tabloids from a year or so prior.

                Lance Corporal Kanda was called to the stand. She smiled nervously around the room, from nerves rather than happiness.

                “Hello,” she said to Cockburn.

                “This shouldn’t take long,” Cockburn said, almost lazily. “Did you see the man who destroyed your home?”

                “No,” Lance Corporal Kanda answered. The Prosecutor had told her to be honest. Major General Armstrong had told her to say as little as possible.

                “Then why do you believe it was Brigadier General Mustang that was responsible?”

                “I was told it was him.”

                “By whom?”

                “You know, people,” she said.

                “Hearsay, you mean?”

                “Yes, I suppose,” she said. She opened her mouth to say more but caught a warning looking from the Prosecutor and stopped talking.

                “That will be all,” Cockburn said, and Lance Corporal Kanda left the room.

                Meital Pasternack and Scar came into the room, and they were both sworn in. Cockburn presented Meital with a stack of papers, requesting that she write out her answers. Nevertheless, Scar would be the one to read what she wrote. The Prosecutor wondered if Cockburn actually didn’t trust Scar to truthfully translate Meital’s sign language, or if he was just trying to subtly influence the jury in some manner.

                “Can you tell me more about the Dental Alchemist?” Cockburn asked. The Prosecutor winced. He had considered that the questioning might go in this direction, and it was the one that Meital had fared worst at during their rehearsals.

                Meital scribbled on the paper given her, and Scar read, “What do you want to know?”

                Cockburn chuckled, like a spider circling a trapped fly. “Just want some details filled in.” He glanced at your notes. “You said that he let you go eventually. How long was that?”

                “Not sure,” Scar said, reading Meital’s response.

                “Well, what did he do to you, if he didn’t kill you?” Cockburn asked.

                “Objection!” the Prosecutor interrupted. “This is irrelevant to the case. The defense is just trying to badger the witness.”

                “Overruled,” said the judge. “The defense must be allowed to defend its client.”

                The Prosecutor sat back down in his seat, quivering. This wasn’t going to be pretty. The Dental Alchemist had hurt Meital badly, and now she was going to have to detail her trauma to the satisfaction of a bunch of hostile strangers. That, or retract her testimony, which was no doubt what Cockburn was hoping would happen. The Prosecutor seethed. A fair judge would have never allowed such questions. He was beginning to wonder if ‘His Honor’ didn’t sometimes parade around in a bedsheet.

                “If the witness would answer?” Cockburn pressed.

                Meital glared at him and then wrote down her answer, which Scar read. “He pulled out my teeth and tongue.”

                “All at once? In the same day?”

                “Tongue first,” Scar read, and Cockburn glanced at the paper.

                “She wrote more than that.”

                Scar gritted his teeth. “Tongue first, and then.” Meital had stopped writing at that point.

                “Please finish that sentence, dear,” Cockburn pressed.

                “You aren’t to address her as ‘dear’,” Scar growled, and the fingers on his right hand twitched. The Prosecutor held his breath. Cockburn seemed unaware at the dangerous path he was treading. Scar’s eyes were intently focused on Cockburn’s face, and he began to raise his right hand.

                All of a sudden, Meital’s hand shot out, grabbing Scar’s wrist. He broke his focus on Cockburn to look at her. Meital let go of Scar’s wrist. She brought both hands up with the index and middle finger on each hand extended. The Prosecutor tried to remember what that meant and then processed that she was shaking her head the entire time. He actually knew that one. It added the negative to whatever sign she had just done.

                “What’s that mean?” Cockburn demanded.

                Scar sneered at him. “She says you’re not worth it.”

                Cockburn’s eyes narrowed. “What does she mean by that?”

                “You’d have to ask her.”

                “I think I will,” Cockburn snapped, but when he turned to Meital, he found that she was already writing furiously on a clean sheet of paper. When she finished, she handed it to Scar, who read it.

                “And then he taught me to eat without a tongue because he said that he wanted me to think of him every time I ate anything. Then he took out my teeth, about one or two a day. It was very painful, in case that wasn’t obvious. I got the teeth I have now from the hospital in Ishval. When all my teeth were gone, he had me smuggled into one of the surviving Ishvalan communities. Is there anything else you’d like to know about the worst experience of my life?”

                “You must have complicated feelings about the man, seeing as he’s the only reason you survived the war, no?”

                “No,” Scar said, reading Meital’s answer. “He was a bad man, and I’m glad that he’s dead.”

                “Did he kill your parents?”

                “What?” Scar read.

                “Yes or no question. Did he kill your parents?”

                “No. That was Mustang,” Scar read.

                “No further questions,” Cockburn said, and Scar escorted Meital out of the room.

                After that, Dr. Knox was called into the room. That’s when everything went wrong because Dr. Knox was nowhere to be found.

                “Is Dr. Knox in the building?” the judge asked. A clerk shook her head. Right as the pandemonium was beginning, Luke came running into the courtroom.

                “Walk, son,’ Lucas reminded him silently.

                “Dr. Knox is gone!” Luke said breathlessly. “He’s not at his house.”

                “How’d you get in?” Lucas asked.

                “Housekeeper let me in,” Luke promised. “She says she hasn’t seen him since he left for court yesterday. His toothbrush is still there, and his bed didn’t look like it had been slept in last night.”

                “What did you do?” the Prosecutor shouted at Cockburn. The Prosecutor had worked defense before. He believed in the depths of his heart that the best thing for the criminal justice system was for the accused – no matter how apparently guilty – should have the best defense possible. But there were some things one simply did not do, and witness tampering was one of them.

                “I didn’t do anything,” Cockburn retorted. “Sounds like your rat got cold feet.”

                It took most of the rest of the day for anyone to get an even murky picture of what had occurred. The authorities got involved. Banks and train stations were called, and Dr. Knox’s picture was faxed around. It was discovered that he’d bought a train ticket home and then another train ticket to the west. In West City, he’d visited a bank in the morning and emptied his account. Stores in the area were called after that, and a few clerks recalled a man matching Dr. Knox’s description purchase a suitcase and clothes and toiletries. The trail went cold around the border. Amestris was still working on improving its relations with its neighbors to the west.

                The Prosecutor’s heart sank when reports of what had transpired trickled back into the anxiously-waiting courtroom. There, the judge made his decision. “I’m afraid I have no choice but to have Dr. Knox’s testimony stricken from the record. The jury is to disregard everything they heard from him. Next witness.”

                The legal expert testified then, as everyone did their best to attend. It was a pretty dry affair in any sense. Cockburn made some stabs at poking at this part of the law or that, but he wasn’t terribly effective. Still, the Prosecutor knew that a conviction was going to be much harder to secure without Dr. Knox. Thanking Ishvala for the foresight, he sent Luke to run a message to Scar. He had lost his second-best witness. He didn’t want anything to happen to his best.

                After the court session for the day was called, the jurors returned to their sequestered quarters. Home Invasion was more on edge than usual, and Mistress Shan wasn’t much better. She asked out loud how they were just supposed to forget Dr. Knox’s damning testimony, but the other jurors just shrugged their shoulders and mumbled that they had to.


	7. The Defense's Case

                The fourth day of the trial began the defense’s case. The first batch of witnesses were soldiers who had served under Mustang’s command in Ishval. There was Charlie and Fabio and Richard and Alexander and Dino and Albert. Cockburn questioned them on Mustang’s character and if they’d ever seen him commit a crime.

                “Did you ever witness Mustang kill anyone?” Cockburn asked Dino when Dino was testifying.

                “Uh, yes, lots of time,” Dino said. “It was a war.”

                “He killed enemy soldiers then?” Cockburn asked.

                “Yes,” said Dino. “And if that’s a crime, then we’re all criminals.”

                “Did you ever witness Mustang kill a couple named Pasternack?”

                “No, no,” Dino said. “Mustang never killed anyone with a name.”

                “Objection!” the Prosecutor said. “Everyone Mustang killed had a name, even if he didn’t care enough to learn it.”

                “Overruled,” the judge said. “Save it for the cross-examination.”

                The Prosecutor sat back down and seethed quietly while he took notes on the soldier’s testimony. Beside him, Lucas was doing the same. Luke was handing them new sheets of paper when they needed them and carefully organizing the finished notes.

                Cross-examination was going to be difficult. He’d need to single out Mustang’s crimes without impugning the honor of every rank and file Amestrian soldier – even if they were murderous bastards who’d been in Ishval. It was Mustang who was trial now, and it was Mustang’s conviction that he needed.

                Kain Fuery got called the stand where he talked enthusiastically about how great Mustang was. It was the same thing when Mustang’s aunt, Madam Christmas, was called to the stand. She said under oath that she couldn’t be prouder of the defendant.  

                “Roy didn’t get to take any shortcuts growing up,” she testified. “He had it rough, and he worked hard for what he was able to obtain. And he’s done so much for this country. My boy shouldn’t be on trial.”

                When it came down to it, it was a good sign that a parade of character witnesses was the best that Cockburn could do. Or it would have been, at least. The prosecutor jabbed his paper with his pen angrily. The absence of Dr. Knox’s testimony was a huge blow. It was all going to come down to Meital and, he suspected, Riza Hawkeye.

                “That will be all,” Cockburn said, and Madam Christmas left the stand. “Next, I’d like the lead prosecutor for the defense to be sworn in.”

                “What?” the Prosecutor said flatly. The defense did not typically call the prosecution to testify. It wasn’t unheard of, but it wasn’t commonly done. It would be too easy for the prosecution to say something damaging in response to a question, as the prosecution and the defense were at odds in their goals. He wondered if Cockburn had a plan or was grasping at straws.

                Leaving his pen and paper behind, the Prosecutor took the witness seat and was sworn in.

                “Could you state the whereabouts of the former State Alchemist Dr. Tim Marcoh?” Cockburn asked, and the Prosecutor stared at him in confusion before fumbling for an answer.

                “In Ishval,” the Prosecutor said. “He’s serving a life sentence in our only prison.”

                “He doesn’t work at the New Light Memorial Hospital?”

                “No, he does,” the Prosecutor said.

                “He’s both serving a life sentence and working at a hospital?” Cockburn asked with feigned innocence.

                “I have no idea where you’re going with this,” the Prosecutor muttered under his breath.

                “Answer the question, please.”

                “Yes,” the Prosecutor said. “It’s both. His sentencing included a work release provision.”

                “He gets a great deal of leniency for a prisoner, does he?”

                “Yes,” the Prosecutor said.

                “You used to live outside of East City, did you not?”

                “I did,” the Prosecutor said.

                “The defendant, Roy Mustang, was in charge of East City at the time you lived there, wasn’t he?”

                “He was.”

                “What did you think of him?”

                “I didn’t care for him,” the Prosecutor said.

                “Were you the prosecutor during Dr. Marcoh’s trial?”

                “I was.”

                “Were you the one who suggested the work release provision?”

                “I handled the details, but it wasn’t my idea.”

                “Did Tim Marcoh murder Meir and Meira Pasternack?”

                “No.”

                “Are you, in your hatred of Brigadier General Mustang, covering for Marcoh by blaming the defendant for Marcoh’s murders?”

                “No.”

                “No further questions,” Cockburn said, and the Prosecutor left the stand. With that, the Prosecutor left the stand, the defense rested.

                “What was that?” Luke asked, over dinner.

                “Gish Gallop,” the Prosecutor explained.

                “Named after Richard Gish, right?” Lucas asked. “I remember reading about him in school.”

                “Uh huh,” the Prosecutor said. “Overwhelm your opponent with too many arguments, and they’ll forget what they were arguing about. Cockburn wanted to confuse the jury. If they have even a bit of doubt about his guilt, they won’t convict.”

                “So we lost?” Luke asked, disappointed.

                “Hey, not yet, kiddo,” Lucas said.

                “Right,” the Prosecutor agreed. “We’ve still got the cross-examination and our rebuttal witness.”

                At the hotel room that Scar and Miles had rented, it was a rough night. Adva was home from her last surgery, and at the Prosecutor’s suggestion, Meital was staying with them. Scar was sitting with her, while Miles taught Adva to play chess. Meital had been rather shaken since she’d left the court room the day before. Scar spent the night with his back to the door, and Miles tossed and turned all night.

                Elsewhere, Cockburn made some discrete phone calls and then checked in on Roy in his hotel room. Roy was nearly inconsolable.

                “I need my lieutenant,” he groan theatrically, collapsing over the arm of the couch.

                “No,” said Cockburn firmly.

                “Why?” Roy demanded. “I’m sunk, aren’t I? Even without Knox, there’s that girl’s testimony.”

                “Everything is under control,” Cockburn assured him.

                “I still need her,” Roy said. “She’s my- my-” He fumbled for a word that would describe the depths of his feelings for Riza. Cockburn made a face and adopted a scolding tone.

                “Don’t you think you’re being rather ridiculous?” Cockburn asked. “Miss Hawkeye is a nice enough piece of ass-”

                Roy sat up suddenly, so that he was perched on the edge of the couch. He glared at Cockburn. “Don’t you ever address Lieutenant Hawkeye in such a manner.” He raised his hand in a threatening manner, only to remember that he wasn’t wearing his special alchemy gloves.

                “Apologies,” Cockburn said insincerely, “but you really need to be sensible about the whole affair. What’s going to happen when you disagree at home and have to see each other at work or disagree at work and have to see each other at home? If you want my advice, I’d tell her to quit her job and be a stay at home wife. If I can get you off – and I can – you’ll have a good salary to support her, and girls are happier in the domestic sphere, even if they don’t always like to admit it.”

                “My relationship with my lieutenant is really none of your business,” Roy said, “but I feel that I should tell you that you have us all wrong. We don’t have disagreements. And I need her to watch my back. Which she has always done, I might add. That’s why it hurts so much to see them forcing her to testify against me like this.”

                Later, hours after the jurors had fallen asleep, two men wearing bedsheets over their clothes snuck into the courtroom. There was a guard on duty, but a clerk sympathetic to their cause had leaked them the guard’s patrol route. While one of the bedsheet-clad men waited at the foot of the stairs that led to the sequestered jurors, another quietly walked up them. There was a knife in his hand.


	8. Cross-examination by the Prosecution

When it came down to it, no one was really sure what happened. Mistress Shan vaguely recalled the scraping at the lock to the door of her room. She was pretty sure that that was what woke her up. Heinkel said that he remembered someone kicking him by accident and concluded from that that the would be assassin had stumbled into him in the dark. Mistress Shan remembered Heinkel shifting into his lion man form, and Home Invasion was awoken by Heinkel’s roar. The only one who actually saw the assassin was Best Coffee in Liore, but his vision wasn’t the best, particularly in the dark. Still, he says he was pretty sure that the assassin backed out of Mistress Shan so fast that he fell backwards over the railing guard, and took the stairs down the wrong way.

                Falman and Amue volunteered to go investigate, but they only found an irritated night security guard, who yelled at them for leaving sequestration. They explained the situation, and the authorities were called in. However, because the jurors were sequestered, the authorities couldn’t talk to them directly without violating the sequestration and potentially jeopardizing the trial. That led to the judge being woken up in the middle of the night to handle the situation.

                He ruled that it would be acceptable for the authorities and jurors to communicate by written notes delivered back and forth by trusted clerks of the court, provided all of the notes were scrutinized by the judge before going up or down the stairs. It was a very inefficient process that took until well past sunrise and ultimately produced nothing. The jurors insisted there’d been a stranger in the room. The night security guard insisted he hadn’t seen anyone. The authorities couldn’t search the room for physical evidence until the jurors were first moved to a separate room. The jurors spent two hours cramped up into a tiny conference room in the court house, but the authorities found no evidence in their rooms, and none was found on the court grounds.

                The end result was that when the cross-examination of the defense’s witnesses began, the judge, jury, and most of the clerks were in an irritable, sleep-deprived mood. When the Prosecutor, Lucas, and Luke arrived at the court, they were ignorant of what had transpired but could tell immediately that something was wrong.

                “Can you sense it?” the Prosecutor asked his grandson.

                Luke looked around. “Yeah. It’s like a bad feeling or like it is before a storm breaks loose.”

                “Lesson for you,” the Prosecutor said. “We’ll want to tread carefully today. The judge’s got a bee up his, er, bonnet. If we’re not careful, he’ll take it out on us.”

                That, the Prosecutor found to his dismay, proved to be the case. For instance, during his cross-examination of Fabio, the Prosecutor asked him about what he had witnessed of Mustang’s actions. He knew that Fabio wasn’t a witness to the murder of the Pasternacks, but it was still a chance to emphasize a pattern of behavior.

                “Objection!” Cockburn interrupted immediately. “That question is irrelevant to the case.”

                “Sustained,” the judge said before gesturing for a clerk to bring him more coffee.

                So it went until it was time for the Prosecutor himself to be cross-examined. Lucas would be handling the questions, since the Prosecutor could hardly cross-examine himself. The Prosecutor prayed to Ishvala that things would go well. As they hadn’t expected the Prosecutor to be called to the stand, they hadn’t had much time to practice. The best the Prosecutor had managed was a few questions jotted down on note cards for Lucas to read from.

                It didn’t go well. Lucas had never done a solo case before, and there hadn’t been plans for him to do anything but assist on the case against Mustang. He remembered to grab the note cards before approaching the witness stand, but then he didn’t do anything but shuffle them nervously.

                “Do you think Mustang did it?” was his first question, which was not one of the questions on the card.

                “Objection!” Cockburn injected immediately. “We deal in facts in this case, not opinions.” The last bit was directed less at the judge than directly at Lucas, and it was accompanied by a condescending sneer.

                “Sustained,” said the judge.

                “Oh, um, er,” Lucas tried, and the Prosecutor could see him freezing up.

                “Are you done yet?” Cockburn asked quietly, but the Prosecutor heard.

                “Objection, your honor,” the Prosecutor said. “The defense is badgering the prosecution.”

                “There will be silence from the witness unless answering a question,” the judge commanded, pounding his gravel.

                “No further questions,” Lucas finally managed. He made it back to the table for the prosecution without fainting, where the Prosecutor joined him. Lucas buried his face in his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so, so sorry. I jacked that one up.” Luke looked at his father sympathetically.

                The Prosecutor patted his shoulder sympathetically. “It’s okay, son. The first time’s always the hardest, and the deck was stacked against you. We weren’t expecting old Cockburn to call me to the stand, so our case never hinged upon my testimony. Besides-” The Prosecutor stopped, looked around conspiratorially and then lowered his voice even further. “-besides, during my first case, I threw up on the judge.”

                Lucas looked up. “No way.”

                “Really?” asked Luke.

                “In Ishvala’s name, I’m telling the truth,” the Prosecutor said. “Worst day of my life. But I got through it. And that’s what you have to do. Just keep going.”

                As the last witness for the defense had been cross-examined, the judge dismissed the court for the day. Cockburn excused himself from the defense, saying that he had some business to attend, and Roy went back to his hotel room. He didn’t stay there, however. Not all evening, anyway. He did try. He tried pacing back in forth, drumming his fingers on the table incessantly, and having fictional conversations in his head. Eventually, however, he excused himself to his hotel room, opened the window, and scaled the drainpipe down to the ground.

                His plan was to see Riza Hawkeye, but in the process, he nearly ran into August Cockburn. The lead lawyer for his defense was meeting with a man Roy didn’t know down at the street corner.

                “Steve’s dead,” the other man was saying plaintively. “Tom doesn’t know what happened to him, but he only barely got his body out in time.”

                “I’m sorry about Steve,” Cockburn said in a neutral tone of voice, “but I told you that I didn’t want to know names. What about B Squadron?”

                Roy saw the other man shake his head in the dark. “No good. She’s been with Scar nonstop. We haven’t been able to get close to her.”

                “That’s unfortunate,” Cockburn said. “Now be on your way.”

                “Yeah, have a nice day yourself,” the other man said and left.

                Cockburn turned around and saw Roy. “Good evening, Brigadier General,” he said pleasantly.

                Roy’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t like the sound of that,” he said.

                “And I don’t like you sneaking off to meet up with Lieutenant Hawkeye,” Cockburn replied briskly. “Come now, back to the hotel with you.”

                “If you stop…whatever that was you were doing. I don’t want to win like that.”

                “It’s already stopped,” Cockburn assured him. “It didn’t work. And if it makes you happy, I promise a further attempt won’t be made.”

                Roy sighed. “And I’ll continue missing my better half for another night.”


	9. The Rebuttal Witness

                What ultimately proved to be the final day of the trial dawned. It hadn’t been expected to be the last day. The prosecution was to call forth their rebuttal witnesses, and then the defense would be allowed to cross-examine them before closing arguments were made, and the jury retired to make their decision.

                Scar, Miles, and Meital were all anxious for the trial to be over. As they were all either witnesses or an assistant to a witness, they weren’t allowed to be in the courtroom unless they were testifying. Mustang’s former lawyer (with the aid of an army of uncredited ghost writers) had a new tell all book out, but it was long on sensationalism and short on facts. All the newspapers were covering the trial now, of course, but most of them didn’t off a play by play of what had transpired. The Eclipsed Sun did, but Scar was reluctant to believe that a giant, orange alligator from the sewers beneath Central had testified in Mustang’s defense.

                Adva had asked if Miss Winry could join them for breakfast, and so the quintet took their meal at an outdoor café in Central. The food was Cretan, which got Miles excited. Under Bradley’s rule, Cretan establishments were often forced to close down, and Miles was glad to see things changing. Chance had it that Scar and Winry found themselves sitting next to each other. Winry considered asking Scar to move, and Scar thought about offering to switch seats with someone, but in the end, both decided to say nothing, and they broke bread with each other.

                A discussion about the trial soon turned into trying to explain the trial to Adva, who was young enough to still not understand a lot of things.

                “So Mustang is a bad guy?” she asked.

                “He did a lot of really bad things,” Scar said.

                “But he’s also Uniform Daddy’s boss?”

                “Yes,” Miles said.

                “And he was my fiancé’s boss,” Winry added. She tapped her index finger to her mouth and looked thoughtful. “Did you ever meet Ed that time he visited Ishval? Yay tall, pony tail?”

                Adva shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.” There was a pause. “Adult stuff is complicated.”

                “It is, Sweetie,” Scar said, and ruffled her hair.

                Elsewhere, Lance Corporal Kanda was helping Major General Armstrong get prepared for the day. Kanda was also anxious to know how the trial would end, and it was beginning to affect her duties. She buttered Armstrong’s newspaper, stirred Armstrong’s coffee with her toothbrush, and attempted to dress the Major General in the uniform of a Lance Corporal.

                “Enough,” Major General Armstrong said finally. “I’ll get myself ready. You do twenty push-ups. It’ll help you clear your head.”

                “Yes, sir!” Lance Corporal Kanda said, saluting. She promptly began doing jumping jacks. Major General Armstrong supposed she had to at least credit Kanda for doing twenty of them.

                Elsewhere, the team for the prosecution ate breakfast together.

                “Are we going to get him, Grandpa?” Luke asked.

                “I don’t know,” said the Prosecutor.

                “The loss of Dr. Knox’s testimony really hurt us,” Lucas said.

                “Even with his testimony, it was never a sure thing,” the Prosecutor said. He saw the crestfallen look on Luke’s face. “Way of the world, I’m afraid. We do what we can, but the rich and proud and powerful never go down easy.”

                At Roy’s hotel, Cockburn practically had to drag Roy out of bed.

                “Go away,” Roy said, burying his head on his pillow. “They’re forcing Lieutenant Hawkeye to testify today, and I can’t bear to watch that.”

                “If you don’t attend, you’ll be found in contempt of court,” Cockburn explained, trying and failing to keep the exasperation out of his voice.

                “Contempt of court is worth my lieutenant not having me witness her degradation,” Roy declared.

                “Don’t you think,” Cockburn said, making a failed grab at Roy’s pillow, only for Roy to shift out of reach at the last second, “that Lieutenant Hawkeye might want you there for moral support?”

                Roy peaked out from underneath the hotel pillow. “Oh no! You’re right. I need to get ready!’

                As the beginning of the day’s legal proceedings drew near, Grumman walked his granddaughter Riza to the courtroom. Since she was testifying that day, he wanted to attend to support her.

                “We’re almost there, sir,” Riza said.

                Grumman frowned at her. “You’d make an old man happy if you called me ‘Granddad’ or ‘Grandpa’ or ‘Papa’.”

                “Yes, Grandfather,” Riza said, just as formally. Grumman sighed.

                “Does Mustang know that you’re going to testify against him?”

                “I was told that my name would have been on the witness list, so he should know.”

                “And you’re really prepared to do this?”

                “I am,” Riza said. “Whatever happens afterward, this trial is important to me.”

                “Well,” Grumman said, “we’re here. So here goes nothing.”

                The attendees filed in and took their places. The news people set up their cameras and took up their pens and pads of paper. The lawyers shuffled their notes, and the judge adjusted his robe. The court was called to order, and Riza Hawkeye was called to the stand.

                The Prosecutor left his seat at the table for the prosecution and walked toward the witness podium. He cleared his throat and began. “How would describe the defendant’s characters?”

                Riza Hawkeye smiled at Roy Mustang in a mixture of gentleness and sadness, but when she spoke, her voice was firm. “He’s always had good intentions,” she said, “but he overestimates himself. And like all of us, he didn’t know how to oppose Presidential Decree #306. So he did exactly as he was ordered to, even though he – all of us – knew the orders were wrong.”

                Out of one eye, the Prosecutor had watched Mustang’s reaction to the various witness’ testimonies. He had been remarkably stoic for the duration of the trial, but now he was staring at Hawkeye in shock.

                “Riza?” he asked softly. “You _wanted_ to testify?”

                “Shut up,” the Prosecutor heard Cockburn hiss at Mustang, but neither Mustang nor Hawkeye were listening.

                “Yes, Roy,” Riza said. “This is right thing. I- I tried to have them try me, as well, but with my grandfather-”

                “Never!” Roy said insistently. “I’m glad you weren’t prosecuted. But me?”

                “No!” whispered Cockburn in horror.

                “Your Honor?” Roy asked.

                “Do this, and I’m gone,” Cockburn warned.

                “We can stop the trial, Your Honor,” Roy declared. “I confess. I did it. I’m guilty.”

                “What?” the judge asked. In fact, a lot of people in the courtroom were saying the same thing.

                “Oh, Roy!” Riza cried, leaving the witness stand.

                “Riza!” Roy said. Pushing his chair back, he hopped up on the table for the defense. Then, reaching down, he pulled Riza up next to him.

                “What’s going on?” Luke asked, baffled.

                “I’m quitting!” Cockburn answered, gathering his belongings and storming out of the courtroom.

                In the audience, Grumman pulled out a handkerchief and wiped away tears from his eyes before giving up and dissolving into sobs. “She loves him so much,” he told the person next to him, who happened to be Major General Armstrong. In response, Major General Armstrong rolled her eyes.

                The judge banged his gravel on the podium. “Would the defense and the rebuttal witness for the prosecution please stop standing on the table for the defense? I will have order in my courtroom!”

                Roy spun Riza around on top of the table. “His Honor isn’t going to get what he wants,” Roy said, “but you do. Oh, my precious lieutenant, this is for you.” Roy raised his voice and addressed the judge and the prosecution and the court attendees and the news people. “I’m guilty! I’m guilty of the murder of Meir Pasternack, I’m guilty of the murder of Meira Pasternack, and I’m guilty of loving Riza Hawkeye!”


	10. The Verdict

                It took about ten minutes for the judge to regain order of the court and for everyone to decide what to do. It took a further two minutes to get Mustang and Hawkeye to stop passionately kissing each other on top of the table for the defense. The judge tried – and failed – to get Hawkeye sent out of the courtroom. He eventually just gave up and left her sitting on Mustang’s lap, with her arms wrapped around his neck. He at least managed to get the two criminal lovebirds to lower their voices to a whisper.

                “Oh, Riza,” Roy said. “If I’d only known!”

                “I tried to tell you,” Riza said.

                “You did, you did. I didn’t listen. I’m so sorry.”

                “All is forgiven. I love you, Roy!”

                “I love you, too, Riza!”

                Eventually, the judge succeeded in bringing the trial to a close. The Prosecutor gave his closing argument. (It was very brief. “Look, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, he confessed. He’s guilty.”) Mustang opted to represent himself for the closing argument. (It was also very brief. “I’m guilty. You should convict me.”)

                The jury was dismissed to their sequestered quarters to reach a verdict. There was some brief debate. Home Invasion thought that they should find Mustang Not Guilty on the grounds that he and Hawkeye made such a good couple, but everyone else argued against her, including Falman, who insisted that a guilty verdict would make the couple happiest. Drill Carriage wondered if there was a grounds to declare a mistrial, which prompted hearty discussion among the jurors. Questions were sent down to the court on the matter, but in the end, the jurors decided to find Brigadier General Roy Mustang guilty on all counts.

                Once the verdict was handed down, all that was left was for everyone to go their separate ways. Roy Mustang was taken to jail to await sentencing, with Riza Hawkeye promising to visit him every day. Lance Corporal Kanda accompanied Major General Armstrong back to Fort Briggs. Kanda was smiles the whole way. Armstrong had a better poker face, but she seemed to be in a good mood, as well. The jurors returned to their various homes and were happy to sleep in their own spaces at night. The team for the prosecution, Miles, Scar, Meital, and Adva returned to Ishval. Winry went home to Rush Valley.

                The feeling that justice had been served last three days. Then the newspapers broke the new turn of events. Everyone was in a different place when they got the news.

                The team for the Prosecution was preparing for the day when Luke stumbled across the newspaper on the door. He eyes well up with tears as he showed his parents and grandfather.

                “Does this mean we lost?” he sniffed, trying not to try.

                “Oh, sweetie, it’ll be okay,” Ruth said, comforting him. His father clapped him on his shoulder and gently rubbed it.

                The Prosecutor stared at the newspaper forlornly. Then he crouched down in front of his grandson. “It’s not about winning or losing,” he explained the best he could. “We ran a clean case. That’s all Ishvala asks of us. We have to have faith that everything will get sorted out in the end.”

                Scar was adding a basement to the temple when Meital came running in with the newspaper. He glared at it and then asked, “Is there anything that needs destroying?”

                Meital brought her hands up, fingers sprayed, and moved them apart. Then she made a circle with her hands before striking her right fist off of her left fist.

                “Right,” Scar said. “That boulder fell of the cliff. It’s blocking the road to the north of here, right?”

                Meital nodded.

                Scar looked at the half finished basement. “I’ll create again tomorrow. For today, just for today, I need to destroy something.” Meital followed him as he went to the boulder and watched as he used alchemy to destroy it.

                On another day, Mistress Shan would have been irritated by her absence from work, but when she saw the news, she only confirmed that Meital was with Scar and then did her best to carry on with her duties.

                Lance Corporal Kanda got the news over lunch at Fort Briggs, but Major General Armstrong was watching, so she tried not to let it affect her. She did fine until after dinner, when she asked to be excused. Then she went into the bathroom and cried until her eyes were puffy and read.

                She’d mostly gotten her face back to neutral when she left the bathroom, but she found Major General Armstrong waiting for her.

                “To my office,” was all the Major General said.

                Lance Corporal Kanda followed her. Once they were alone, Major General Armstrong slid open a door and pulled out a dagger. She presented it to Kanda handle-first.

                “Sir?” Kanda asked.

                “This dagger has been in the Armstrong family for generations. I don’t have a daughter to inherit it,” Major General Armstrong said, “so I want you to have it. The law doesn’t always serve us, but there are alternate forms of justice.”

                Colonel Miles got the news while on his way to report with Grumman directly for a monthly status meeting on the progress of the Ishvalan Reconstruction Project. He bought the newspaper while waiting for his train and read it angrily on the route.

                “What’s this about, sir?” Miles demanded, as he entered Grumman’s office.

                “It wasn’t an easy decision,” Grumman protested, as Miles threw the newspaper on Grumman’s desk.

                “I heard that you promised,” Miles seethed before adding belatedly, “Sir.”

                “I promised there’d be a trial,” Grumman said. “And there was. Look, I know some Ishvalans are going to be angry-”

                “Why jeopardize the peace we’ve worked so hard for, then?” Miles demanded.

                “You weren’t there,” Grumman said stubbornly. “She loves him too much. I couldn’t let it end like that. I want great-grandkids, you know.”

                “No doubt so did Meir and Meira Pasternack,” Miles said angrily. He gave a curt report on the progress of the Ishvalan Reconstruction Project, waited to be dismissed, turned on his heel, and left. Behind him, on the desk, the newspaper read GRUMMAN PARDONS MUSTANG!


End file.
